In this new miniseries adaptation of John Steinbeck’s 1952 family saga, Florence Pugh has the juiciest role and gives a dynamic performance as Cathy, the manipulative, lethal woman at the centre of the conflict between two brothers: Adam Trask (Christopher Abbott), who marries her, and Charles (Mike Faist), who warns him against her. A few years after publication, the novel was famously made into a film starring James Dean, directed by Elia Kazan. His granddaughter, the actress and director Zoe Kazan, has created and written this series but with a different approach, bringing Cathy to the fore. And where the film is based on a slice of the book, the series covers its full timeline, ranging from the post-Civil War years in New England to California during World War One. Tracy Letts plays the Trask brothers’ father, Ciaran Hinds is the head of a neighbouring family, and Hoon Lee is the Trasks’ servant. Pugh told Vanity Fair about playing the antiheroine: “It was really important to me not to warm her up or make excuses for her,” but to find “tenderness and humanity without changing the primary DNA of the person.”
